Decontamination
by Reincarnated Poet
Summary: Beneath the humans struggling to live and breath and die, there lives a bacteria the hollow shape of these beings, devoid of the spark that makes creatures living. Decontamination is important. The invading species, the threat, must be eliminated. She was always good at her job.


p AN: Several people participated in the Challenge placed in Demon on a Lead. I was so very excited by the turn out, and here is the first promised piece. I offered a one shot in place of a chapter to someone, who preferred that, so here you get a very short one-shot, though I think it has quickly become my favorite. Again, not a feel good piece.

**A Selfish Moment**

A pale young woman stood in failing light, her face shaded red by the slow blinking red security alarm on the wall in front of her. She'd been standing there for an hour, simply staring off in front of her, eyes nearly unseeing.

The pale shirt she wore was stained red at one sleeve, but she paid it no attention. She hadn't since she'd finished the decontamination. The body had been taken by medical, the bones cored out to a bird-like density. Most of the blood had been harvested. Only a few drops had remained on the gurney, and as she cleaned, the young woman had run her sleeve through them.

The red smears had been dealt with. Decontamination was essential. It was her job.

She was very good at her job.

Dark eyes trailed up and over a grey slab of metal where it sat amongst concrete. A wheel-like structure protruded from the metal, and in the young woman's head, she had words for the thing in front of her. Very particular words.

Particular things call for particular words.

Door.

Handle.

It was after hours. Everyone should have been in their quarters. She should have been in her quarters, sleeping after a late night decon. Except there was blood on her sleeve, so very close to her hand.

The blood had come from a body. A body had come from a person. That person had come from a family. That family had come from the outside. The outside...the outside could kill them all. Except that family, that family that had such bright souls.

The image of a cocksure grin on a narrow face flashed across her memory, filling up her mind. In the next moment, that same face was grey, none of the sun-kissed color left. The big, expressive eyes were closed, never again to open. She shook away the thought. It was yet a lie her mind told her, but in a few days-weeks, months, no amount of time was long enough-it could be true.

A little pained sound escaped from deep in her throat, and something hot stung at her nose and the corners of her eyes. That could not come to pass.

The body had belonged to a young, blonde headed girl. Harper, had been her name, and the young woman wondered at how the rest of her family would feel. They would be panicked. They would be worried. They would be fed lies as one by one they disappeared into the darkness that was medical, their bone marrow and blood sucked from them efficiently and completely only to be pumped into another person.

Someone pale. Someone weak limbed. Someone completely unaware how to survive in a world where they didn't have to be either of those things. Someone that had been given a chance of a life on the surface by snuffing out another.

The young woman took a step forward, knowing full well that in another, she would be close enough for the heat sensors on the door to pick up her presence and sound the alarm. She took that step, hands on the wheel-like knob, and waited.

It did not take long. Guards came around the corner, eyes wide and guns trained on her back. She turned, twisting the wheel nearly to the point of no return as she did, glancing over her shoulder at them. Her pale face was lit red by the light.

"Maya!" one of the guards said, calling her name as he recognized her. "Come on, girl, come away from there."

She smiled sweetly at him, that stinging in her eyes growing until it burns from her in thin teardrops that made their way to the dimples at her cheeks.

"Do not make us do something everyone would regret, Maya," another guard said, stepping forward with the gun trained on her.

"I regret a lot," Maya said simply. Her eyes fell away from the guards and turned back toward the door. She tensed, ready to throw the knob, and in that small movement, gunshots rang out, one after the other, and dime-sized areas of cold and force rickochetted through Maya's back, over and over, twisting her on her feet until finally, the rapid pop-pop-pop of the gun ceased.

She glanced down her front, seeing her pale blouse stained red in several growing patches. In front of her, in the door, she could see the bullets, smashed into the thick iron. A bubbling sound slowly rose in her throat, and she turned toward the guards, one hand still on that wheel, as she swayed.

In a moment, she was falling forward, hand tight against the metal it held until finally, a hissing pop broke the silence and a clean rush of air flooded into the hall. Maya did not hear the screaming of the guards or their retreat. She did not hear anything as men, women and children died in their beds.

Her skin blistered and peeled and turned a charred red. Later, when young men and women were stepping past her body and out the door, one of them stopped, gripped her ruined hand, and kissed it. A selfish decision, really, one made because of blood that might have been on her hands, and even as she was gone and simply not there, it was worth it to her, as those dry lips brushed against her lifeless skin.

Beneath the ground, beneath the earth where true people lived, there was once an infection. It was a hollow replica of those men and women fighting and dying and living not so far above them, and its continued survival meant the death of what was real. Decontamination was important.

She was good at her job.


End file.
